Toray Industries, Inc. (head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as “Toray”) today announced that it had reached a basic agreement with Saati S.p.A (head office: Como Province, Lombardy Region, Republic of Italy; hereinafter referred to as “Saati”) to acquire its European carbon fiber fabric and prepreg business. Toray will take over the assets of Saati’s plant (location: Legnano, Milan Province) in January 2015, which would start operation as Composite Materials (Italy) S.r.l., (CIT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toray, while Saati's American composite business will still belong to the Saati Group.
In Europe, Toray currently is engaged in carbon fiber business starting from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor at its French subsidiary, Toray Carbon Fibers Europe S.A. (CFE), and CFRP parts business that uses carbon fiber fabric at its German subsidiaries of Euro Advanced Carbon Fiber Composites GmbH (EACC) and ACE Advanced Composite Engineering GmbH (ACE). Through this planned acquisition of intermediate material business base, Toray establishes its own integrated supply chain, and would further strengthen the structure of Toray Group’s carbon fiber composite materials business in Europe.
Saati's carbon fiber fabric and prepreg business has been expanding rapidly in recent years as a customer of Toray Group's carbon fiber-related companies, especially of CFE, under the strong cooperation between the two companies. In particular, in the premium automobile field, it has been highly acclaimed by the market for its quick response to customer requirements, despite being a late entrant into the market. Going forward, Toray Group will transfer its technology to CIT while aiming to expand the business beyond Europe by leveraging its global sales channel.
Toray positions its Carbon Fiber Composite Materials Business as one of the Strategically Expanding Businesses and plans to drive forward exponential expansion of the business by proactive investment of management resources including M&A under the medium-term management program “Project AP-G 2016” launched in April 2014,. The acquisition of CIT is part of this strategy, and Toray aims to expand and advance its Carbon Fiber Composite Materials Business through enhancing its supply chain.
